all that's gone by (the years she sat waiting)
by silverxsnowflake
Summary: she waits for him fifteen years so she can find happiness. oneshot, tomoyo x eriol, one-sided kaho x eriol.


all that's gone by (the years she sat waiting)

 **A/N: This is a Cardcaptor Sakura one-shot; maybe it isn't in the style of my usuals; it's about Tomoyo waiting for Eriol to come back ot her, and figuring out that he isn't what she thought he is, but loving him anyways. It might be difficult to guess who the other characters are that I didn't specify (she is Tomoyo, the coffee shop guy is randomly random, and the girl that Eriol had to marry was Kaho). I do not own Cardcaptor Sakura.**

summary: she waits fifteen years for him to come back to her.

It's hard to believe that she would ever be in this position.

She sits all alone in her apartment, mindlessly dangling her fingers over the small little glass ball that he left behind that long month ago, and wishes that it could be spring again. Spring is the only time that she can see him without arousing any suspicion, since the two companies have a business meeting annually.

Missing him is a futile activity; it only makes the hole in her heart larger, only makes her head pound with grief until she has to sit down again and breathe slowly, but it makes her feel like he's not truly gone, since he'll come back to her one day.

Maybe he will. He never said that he would, and she knows his type, but still she'll sit at her ornate kitchen table, hold the only thing he ever gave to her, and dream that promises will come true.

The sky outside is a bright blue, filled with fluffy, light clouds, so beautiful that she wants to scream.

She was at the wedding, of course, as one of her bridesmaids and the groom's best friend, but when they looked at each other, she saw longing and passion in his eyes.

All she wanted was to lunge between the bride, in her radiant white dress and lace that she hated, hates so much, and the groom, like the gloomy twilight in his black suit, complete with a rose.

She wants to make him say, "I object to this marriage," she wanted to stop him from making her his wife.

But she couldn't, because all he wanted was to make his father happy so the two families could make a business deal.

It makes her furious when she thinks about it. Freedom in exchange for money. Your own daughter or son in exchange for more power.

Now she's crossing over to her bedroom to nap and reflect in silence on her life thus far, which has consisted of waiting, waiting for him to come back to her.

Didn't he want her? Wasn't she more important to him than anything?

No, she thinks, fifteen years is not a long time, and she can certainly wait. She's got all the money and time in the world.

She resolves to do something.

The first year, nothing much really happens, and she grimly resigns herself to her fate, of another similar fourteen years.

The middle years pass by, and she thinks that she can really do this.

It's in her last year, the fourteenth year, that she meets him.

"Hello," he says cheerfully, pouring her cup of coffee. "I haven't seen you here before, and I make it my job to know all of the customers."

Despite his lame haircut and introduction, he's cute and sweet, and it helps that he really knows how to make a vanilla bean creme frappucino.

She thinks that maybe, just maybe, he could be the landmark of her last year spent waiting.

At their one month anniversary, she tells him that she needs some space.

"I'll wait for you, then," he tells her, smiling, but a little hurt.

She affectionately ruffles his hair, for what she hopes will be the last time, and leaves his apartment,

Only a week more until the marriage contract is up.

The first day of that week is so much longer than she thought it would.

She takes a break off of work, and sits in her apartment, cooking up a storm.

She makes brownies, cookies, cake, sushi, eggs, rice, and it feels so good to have a purpose again. She'll make them into lunch boxes for him, and put them in her refrigerator until the end of the week.

At night, she's so tired she collapses, but it makes her feel so happy to be doing something for him.

Not like that useless wife of his, only for show, like a little doll. Spitefully, she thinks that she probably can't cook or do laundry or anything, that's she just another of those stupid heiresses who have everything given to them on a silver plate.

In spite of what people believe, she worked her way up to the top.

Her parents had disowned her after her mother had another of her fits, and her father divorced her, wanting to erase the entire legacy of his insane wife. Nobody was ever to mention her name, and God forbid that they care about her child, even though she was also his child.

Deep down inside, she can't stand to be abandoned, to be thrown away like a rag doll

She's afraid that he'll be just like her father as soon as she outlives her uselessness.

The second day drives her up the wall even more.

Perched on her couch, watching the flat-screen television, she starts to have doubts about the whole thing. Who takes a new wife after fifteen years instead of as soon as it's suitable to divorce?

Sliding down onto her knees on the plush carpeting, she stares up at the ceiling, and doubts. Jealousy and hate start to bloom inside of her, and before she knows it she's entangled in their vines, and their thorns slice and cut at her, like they're laughing at her foolishness in believing him.

It will not work, it will never happen.

She gasps for air, drowning in a pool of fear, and claws her way out, breaking the rose-stained glass she's been viewing life with in the process.

Shards of glass fall all around her, and she picks them up, forming them into a picture that tells her exactly what she didn't want to see.

For example, why hasn't he said a single thing to her on his own since that fateful summer day, since the wedding? Why has he never acknowledged her except for once a year in April? And why has she just begun to realize this now?

As the week inches slowly to a close, by the end she's afraid for her life, because waiting for him to love her _was_ her life.

"You're not for real, are you?" She starts muttering to herself, and it escalates to hysteria. "YOU'RE NOT FOR REAL! YOU'RE GOING TO LEAVE ME BEHIND LIKE HIM!"

She claws at the clothing that's strangling her, and finally rips off the heavy coat, even though it's winter, and stares at the door with bloodshot eyes.

Regaining her senses, she goes to the bathroom and splashes water on her face, even though she can hear the knocking.

She's now perfectly presentable, albeit cold, clad in an airy pink dress and sandals. She goes to the door and unlocks it.

 _He_ is standing outside, smiling sheepishly.

It's been fifteen years, but he still looks the same, if a bit more tired and worn out. His eyes light up when he sees her face, and he holds her in a tight embrace.

She braces herself for the worst possible news.

"I'm back," he says.

"For good?" she asks, her voice cracking a little. She looks away in order to hide her shame, and chokes down sobs.

He hesitates a little.

The final puzzle piece clinches in her mind. It's fifteen years of suffering too late, but she looks up at his face.

His eyes, which she had thought were the most beautiful part of him, were dull and flat. The light had all but disappeared.

"You're not the same," she whispers, "you're not the same!"

He gently holds her by the shoulders, and forces her to look at him. His face is devoid of any emotion but care.

"No, I'm still the same. I still love you."

She breaks down and shakes, tears trickling down her face, and as she wails like a baby, he strokes her hair, murmuring kind words, and going to make her tea.

She sits alone, at her kitchen table numbly, and remembers that this was how the story had started, this was where she began, waiting for him.

She's here again, and she's come back to the beginning.

But this time, it'll be different.

He still loves her, he said it himself.

But as the years pass, and she tries to love him, it's the opposite of what she thought.

She can't ever truly love him, because she'll never get past the mistrust, the insanity, and the craze that those long years of waiting created, because now they're a part of her, they're what got her past each day without him.

But she's content to just sit there, on the plush couch, as he lays with his head in her lap and they watch some comedy that makes her want to laugh, but she doesn't, because her laugh, though apparently normal-sounding to him, sounds to her completely alien, and she wonders sadly just how much she lost as she waited. She's lost her hope, she's lost her romantic dreams, and she's more realistic now, but it still makes her melancholy to reflect on when she really thought that things could be better.

His eyes are slowly regaining the light and truth she saw in him when she first loved him, and she's happy for that.

She was wrong. He's still the same boy that she loved, only now he's a man. Everything about him, from the way he lingers in the morning to eat pancakes with her, from the way that he smiles, is still the same.

It's her that's changed.

They aren't going to get married, because she doesn't want to tie him back, to make him bitter like her father. She wants him to know that he can leave anytime. She wants him to know that she trusts him not to.

And she doesn't, and they don't end up like her parents.

They end up right where they want to, elderly and tired, a nice old couple like everyone else, unassuming.

But nobody will ever know the struggle they went through so they could be together, nobody would ever know how she sat, staring outside of her window, longing for his embrace, and how he tossed whole buckets of pennies into wishing wells in the futile hope that somehow they might transcend time and make long, lonely years turn into nothing. How he visited the candy store she used to go to every day, hoping to "accidentally catch her." How she went through turmoil in her mind, bitter with sadness and longing, and felt so alone, even when surrounded with millions of people.

It's better this way, though, because it keeps them out of the eye of the media, and it lets them have a peaceful existence.

She still sometimes contemplates whether it was worth it, and decides yes every time.

Watching the stars, she thanks fate for letting it happen. But inside she knows that with every painful second, with every headache and tear, that she paved her own way to happiness.


End file.
